Just over a month into Donald Trump’s second term, press secretary Karoline Leavitt stood behind the podium in the briefing room and triumphantly announced that the administration was “going to give the power back to the people” by taking over the White House Correspondents’ Association’s traditional role of determining the daily press pool, the small group of journalists who cover the president’s words and actions in more intimate settings for the larger press corps.
Jacqui Heinrich rejects the premise that the WHCA is restrictive in regard to expanding membership, telling Vanity Fair, “At the end of the day, an independent press should be able to organize its own coverage without any interference or involvement from the government.” Heinrich, 36, not only covers the administration on a daily basis as Fox News’ senior White House correspondent, but also currently serves on the board of the WHCA, the specific target of Trump’s attacks.
Given her role on the board, to which she was elected for a three-year term, Heinrich felt as though she had to speak out against the attempts to take power away from the journalist-led organization, which has been advocating for media access to the presidency since 1914. “This move does not give the power back to the people – it gives power to the White House,” Heinrich wrote in an X post, responding to the White House’s unprecedented takeover. “Our job is to advocate for the MOST access possible.”
Heinrich’s job requires daily interaction with White House officials, so before publicly criticizing the move—a relatively rare showing of a Fox News personality taking issue with the Trump administration—Heinrich made sure to give a heads-up to the White House press shop to ensure that no bridges were burned in the process. “I am going to make these statements, and I just want you to know that it has nothing to do with any one of you people individually,” Heinrich recalls warning administration press officials. “It’s just about this being a very significant choice that’s been made, and in my role on the board, I need to speak up for that.” So far, she says, there hasn’t been “any negative impact on my working relationship with them at all.”
Since then, however, Trump has personally attacked Heinrich on Truth Social, calling her “absolutely terrible” after watching her anchor a weekend Fox News program. “Not surprisingly, I later found out that she’s a fan of the White House Correspondents Association!” Trump wrote. (Heinrich’s work has also rankled some Trump allies, including former Fox News star Tucker Carlson.) The president’s barb “didn’t keep me up at night,” Heinrich says, but the reporter did request a meeting with Trump to “figure out what it was” that irked him so deeply. “I still don’t really know what that was about,” she adds.
Looking ahead to Saturday’s annual WHCA dinner in Washington, Heinrich says that even without Trump at the Hilton, the event will still be valuable, as the “importance of journalism” should be celebrated regardless of whether he’s present. Still, she notes that “it’s not too late for him to change his mind.”
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Vanity Fair: The pace at which this administration has churned out news has been very rapid. How are you handling coverage of an administration that’s been moving so quickly?
Jacqui Heinrich: One way I approach things is just to take the 30,000-foot view. There are common threads that go through everything that he’s doing. If you can hold on to that, it helps to not be battered by the volume of information that’s coming your way.
For the first 100 days, the three takeaways that I have are that this administration is trying to, early on, determine the scope of the president’s power by driving a lot of these Supreme Court cases, whether it has to do with deportations or something else. They want to have an early nod from the Supreme Court on what it is that they can do, so that can inform the rest of these four years. Then also reorganizing the world in a way that prioritizes America, whether that be with alliances and partnerships or the global economy. Then also undoing everything, every mark that [Joe] Biden left, if the president can do it. One of the most consistent things that I hear from my sources is that if one of the president’s advisers will say, “Well, this is how Biden did it,” President Trump will immediately want to veer in the other direction.
